The Krech Family

Though many of Telegraph Avenue’s inhabitants didn’t make it out alive, succumbing to drug addiction and poor health, Rachel Krech (now Marinos) and her parents Martha and Richard did — a fact that Rachel credits to her parents’ middle-class upbringings. (Richard was the son of pioneering social psychologist David Krech, a Cal professor.)

Martha and Richard’s background gave them the means and the knowledge to get professional jobs—at a record store, a clothing store, a daycare center—that others could not. Beyond their jobs, Rachel believed that their backgrounds gave them the insight to realize that they needed to get off of the Avenue before it was too late. When Rachel was eight—before she might join the teen scene of the Ave—they moved her away, eventually settling in Washington state.

Unlike many regulars on the Avenue, the Kreches had a place to live, and they opened their apartment on Russell Street up to whichever friends were in need at the moment. One was Kathy Delacour, whom Martha and Richard hired as a live-in nanny for Rachel. Kathy began to look after Rachel when she herself was only twelve or thirteen. Martha invited Kathy to leave with them when she and Rachel moved to Washington state, but she declined. In 1988, Kathy passed away in Berkeley at the age of thirty-two.